Saturday, June 3, 2017

‘Russians have Never Defined Themselves as a Nation in Ethnic Terms,’ Byzov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, June 3 – Leonty Byzov, a
Moscow sociologist who has attracted attention for his writings on what he
calls “the new Russian nation” says that “Russians as a nation have never
defined themselves in ethnic terms” and that it is not very clear just what
people mean when they speak of “’ethnic Russians.’”

The Russian Empire, the Institute of
Sociology scholar says in the course of an interview given to the Rosbalt news
agency, “was a gigantic melting pot” and consequently drawing precise borders
between Russians and Mordvins or some other group is not only extraordinarily
complicated but also fundamentally unconvincing (rosbalt.ru/russia/2017/06/03/1619228.html).

Throughout
the course of Russian history, Byzov argues, “the ethnic factor never occupied
first place …. There always were and are an enormous number of ‘half-castes,’
people of Russian culture but who are not ethnically Russian in the strict
sense of the word.” Indeed, ethnic membership “did not have and does not have
essential significance.”

When
people speak about “’the truly Russian’” Russians, most often they are
referring to the Pomors because the Pomor region was the only region in all of
Russia which no enemy ever conquered, where there was no Tatar invasion, and
where the Russian ethnic genotype as it were was preserved in an untouched way.”

“But,”
Byzov says, “to reduce ‘the native Russian nation’ to the Pomors is wrong
because it is only one of the sub-ethnoses” which make it up; and consequently,
in the Russian case, it is “unwise” to divide people into indigenous and
non-indigenous groups given the ethnic intermixing of almost all of them.

He
goes on to note that “in recent years, it has become unfashionable among
[Russians] to be Europeans. But that is irrelevant given that the Russian
people over the course of centuries was split” between a European noble culture
and the communal subculture of the peasantry. “Which is these now would you
insist on considering the real Russian and which not?”

“The
Russian people is extremely complicated; and in this are both its shortcomings
and its advantages,” Byzov says.On the
down side, “we have not been able to create a model of statehood which will
ensure us stable positions in the 21st century.” But on the other
hand, these divisions “enrich Russian culture.”

According
to the sociologist, Russia’s misfortunes have arisen from the fact that “as a
result of the cataclysms of the 20th century, we have moved too far
from our historic roots. And however much we talk about spiritual bindings
today, they no longer function” to hold the people together.

“The
present generation of Russians [and it is here that he uses the term rossiyane for the first time] is very
little oriented toward its history. Of course, there are exceptions, but the generation
born after 1991 is entirely dissimilar from the one which grew up in the Soviet
era.” And this break and lack of continuity makes it difficult for Russians to
define themselves.

Asked
about his “theory of ‘a new Russian nation,’” Byzov says that he has somewhat
revised it but still considers that “the former mechanisms of identity which
were characteristic at first for the Russian community and then for people of the
Soviet era have already lost their function.”

That
is the source of “the majority of our problems.” It isn’t that we have
preserved “too much” but that we have preserved “too little” and have no
foundation on which to stand. Young people“life as if they were born yesterday and not formed by any past”
whatsoever, Soviet, Russian Imperial or any other.

“Therefore,”
Byzov continues, “there are grounds for asserting that the new Russian nation
consists of people who grew up in post-Soviet times which in terms of numerous
value orientations are sharply distinguished both from traditional Russian
culture and from Soviet” culture as well.

That
is why so many Russians today spend time talking about how to define themselves
– and also why the answer to that question is so difficult for them to seek, a
pattern that stands in sharp contrast to other nations within Russia and beyond
who still hold to their national values rather than viewing themselves in terms
of “all-human” ones.